These images were taken using my Canon SX530HS with its zoom set to 100x (2400mm EFL). Capture was controlled by CHDK AstroKam and autoguiding by DSSR. Best 500 of 1000 jpegs were cropped in PIPP, stacked in AS3! and wavelets in Registax.
The image above was captured using my SX530HS at 50x zoom on a standard tripod. The camera was running a CHDK script which locked it in continuous shooting mode to capture 1400 frames over 17 minutes. All frames were ISO100, f6.5 and 1/250s with autofocus on. I needed to nudge the camera now and then to keep the moon on screen.
Grayscaled and cropped in PIPP, stacked in AS!3 (75% best), wavelets in Registax6 and polished in MS Photos. Not as detailed as my previous 100x shots but much more convenient to capture. I can just pop out when I see a gap in the clouds. Next stop – try same method on the Sun.
And here is another captured in 15 minutes using the method above.
Below is a shot of the Moon I took with my amazing little Canon SX530HS camera.
This was made from 400 jpegs shot at 100x zoom, ISO100, 1/160s, f6.5, AF-on which were captured in CHDK AstroKam. PIPP then grayscaled and culled this to 327 images based on brightness which were stacked in AS!3. Wavelets were applied in Registax 6 and final processing in MS Photos.
I also did some captures with jpegs at 50x zoom and 60sec videos at 100x and 200x zoom to discover the best resulting image. Below are crops of each method and I decided that 100x jpegs are the way to go in future.
And here is my latest Moon shot with my SX530HS at 100x zoom.
I just shot this with my Canon SX530HS at 200x zoom.
15x 60sec video clips captured in CHDK AstroKam, grayscaled in Virtualdub, processed in AviStack, stiched in ICE and inverted in Paint.NET. Focus was a bit off but still not bad for a second hand camera with no scope.
Just shot this on the 10th February with my 1/4″ DMK camera and DSSR’s automatic mosaic module. Stacked in Avistack, stitched in ICE and post processed in Krita. Click to see the full size image.
Below is the DSSR mosaic preview window that lets you monitor mosaic progress. The blue tiles were sky which DSSR automatically skipped to save time – total time taken was 45 minutes. The Moon is egg shaped here because I used a vertical overlap of 50% and a horizontal overlap of 30% to ensure a good stitch in ICE.
I was asked to help out some users align their image sequences of the recent eclipse of the Moon and this is the result using DVS.
[vimeo 141665784]
The following is my idea of the best way to proceed.
1. Use DSSR to Guide (optional)
DSSR can guide on full disk Moons and this has the advantage of minimising the frame to frame drift which speeds up DVS alignment. To do this, zoom out the video screen until the Moon is small enough that you can select the whole disk as a guide target. Reducing the size of the guide target reduces DSSR’s cpu hit and makes guiding easier.
2. Set Similarity to 10
Similarity is used to eliminate false matches in cases like sunspot groups where multiple possible matches occur. For eclipses, there will only be one Moon per frame so the Similarity filter is redundant. Setting it at 10 turns it off.
3. Set Size Parameter to Exactly Match Moon Diameter
You need to make the anchor box the same size as the lunar disk. First set the Drift parameter to 1 to minimise the time taken to display the anchor box after you click. Then click on the centre of the disk and adjust the Size parameter until the anchor box is the same size as the disk.
You can then adjust the Drift setting to suit your image set wobbliness or turn on the search full screen option.
4. Optimise Anchor Swap Setting
This is the KEY parameter for eclipses. It determines how often the current alignment target is swapped out for the current best match. The quickest way in the long term is to make a second set of images at a reduced scale. DVS processing time goes up roughly as the 4th power of image size. Using half size images will align 16 times faster and quarter size images will align 256 times faster.
This speed increase allows you to quickly run a series of alignments with different swap settings and see which best aligns the moon. I tried settings of 1, 5, 10, 20 and then with the parameter unchecked. Setting 5 gave the best results.
5. Produce Intermediate Image Set
The great thing about step 4 is that you now have a good rough alignment of your animation which you can apply to your original image set. Load the original set and then click the Data button on the alignment module. Select the best data file from step 4 and enter 2 for half sized images, 4 for quarter sized images, etc.
Now export your frames as an image sequence.
6. Final Alignment
Load the image set from step 5. You can use a smaller drift value because the Moon should be aligned to within a few pixels. This greatly speeds up processing time and you can then do any manual alignment tweaks, crop, add overlays and export as normal.
This may seem tedious but I found that a set of 328 images from Jim Fakatselis of Peppermill Skies Observatory took 2h30m to align from scratch. Producing the 5 runs in step 4 took a total of 25 minutes and the final alignment took only 36 minutes because it was already roughly aligned. The method above was 2.5 times faster and the results were optimised because of step 4.
7. Tricks and Tips
Finally, here is another of Jim’s eclipse sequences captured on a second scope. Note how the Moon moves about 2/3rds thru due to the overexposed limb.
[vimeo 141995085]
Microsoft have just released an update to their Image Composite Editor (ICE). I gave it a quick try on my last set of lunar mosaic tiles and it looks like a much nicer package. In particular, the export to disk is now almost instantaneous. Download the 64bit version here.
ICE Screenshot
This was shot with my 5.5″ mak – DMK21 – HEQ5 Pro combo.
Scaled down terminator detail.
Click on the image to see it full size.
The image was made up of 50 video files which were automatically captured by DSSR as shown in this speeded up time lapse video. The blue tiles are dark sky which DSSR skips to save time. The whole capture process only took 23 minutes.
[vimeo 118480741]
I then used AS2_Cull_Movies by Andrew Cool of SkippySky to remove videos with only a sliver of Moon because these will crash the stacking process.
AviStack then processed the videos in batch mode and ICE was used to produce the final mosaic.
This tutorial shows how to use DFM and DSSR to automatically capture lunar (and solar) mosaics and how to process them into a final image. I used a Nexstar 4SE OTA on a HEQ5 Pro with a DMK21 camera for this tutorial.
First off, set up your scope and mount and make sure that DSSR has the correct FOV values in its telescope settings page. Let your scope cool down to ambient and then focus using DFM. Then capture your mosaics using DSSR as shown in this speeded up video.
[vimeo 116417321]
DSSR will generate a preview image for each mosaic like this one below.
The blue tiles were dark sky which DSSR automatically skipped but you can see some tiles which are totally black or just have a sliver of Moon on them. We need to remove these before the next processing stage or they will crash the stacking programme. You could do this manually but this is very time consuming, especially for very large numbers of videos.
Luckily, Andrew Cool of SkippySky has produced a great app called AS2_Cull_Movies which will do this for you. You tell it where your videos are stored and what percentage of each video should be above a certain brightness threshold. I used 20% and a brightness threshold of 5. The app then checks each video and moves any rejects into a separate folder (or optionally changes their file extension). You can then move onto the video processing stage.
I use AviStack to process my videos into very sharp images. First, load all the videos from your DSSR video folder and select one of them with prominent features like craters or mountains. Change your settings to Processing>All automatic (except post processing) and Update display>None. Adjust the wavelets and other settings to give the best and sharpest image and process that single video. Remove that video using the red cross and press the Batch Processing button. AviStack will then run through all your remaining videos and produce an image from each.
Finally, open Microsoft ICE and drag all your images onto it. ICE will then stitch your mosaic together and you can then export it to disk. A final edit in your image editor of choice (I use GIMP) will give you an image like below. Compare this image with the shimmering videos in the video above.
Click for full size mosaic.